As astronauts were headed for the moon, the Smith Park team was also reaching for the stars—if reaching for the stars means pouring concrete and planting trees! The second half of the spring semester was a productive one for Smith Park. We expanded our horizons beyond just trees and concrete to include work on gravel courtyards and chain link screens.
Captivating new images
Get ready to see Smith Park from a new perspective. The park recently had a photoshoot with a drone thanks to Christian Ayala with the Front Porch team. It might not be as impressive as seeing the earth from the far side of the moon, but it feels just as exciting for the team! We’re thrilled to continue tracking the construction process from this bird’s eye view.
Construction progress
The trail is fully excavated! When you take a walk around the park, you can see how all of the pieces of the trail will come together—although the sections of road base look more like a walk on Mars than on Earth.
Over 50% of the of the concrete for the trail is finished. One continuous section of concrete trail surrounds the field and connects to the basketball court. The second section starts at the gravel courtyard by the pavilion and links up to the second bench. For a more detailed look at this process and the tree planting process, check out our last blog.
Tree launch window
How do we decide what trees can be planted and which ones need to wait? The sequencing is important because we need space for large concrete trucks to enter the site without driving over our freshly planted trees. Therefor, in most spaces, we must pour concrete before we can plant trees. The challenge is making progress on the trail quickly enough to plant within the “launch window” or planting season. So far, the weather has been on our side, but we are still racing against the summer heat to get as many planted in this season as possible. Over 50 have been planted so far with the help of our peers. Fellow 5th-year, leftover, and 3rd-year students came out to the park and helped to plant 10 trees in one morning. Thank you to the student organization and all the students who came out to help!
Black gum trees surround the field, and crepe myrtle trees shade the pavilion’s courtyard space. Our “mosaic” plating strategy uses sugar maple, trident maple, and river birch trees to create shady spaces around the park.
Exploring a new frontier
Chain link screens are starting to go up around site. We set the poles for the field backstop with concrete, and we are looking to install the screens in the coming weeks. The chain link screens will be hung vertically (a detail borrowed from Lions Park) to allow for the height of the fence to change. On the field, the sweeping arc of the backstop is taking shape. The next steps will be to attach the top rail that the screens will hang from.
Work started again on the mock-up at Morrisette finishing out the chain link screen. To give the screens around the basketball court some dynamic movement we changed the shape of the end bays. Instead of setting all of the poles plumb and vertical, the end poles terminate into the ground at an angle, creating a shape similar to a sail. Check out the awesome renderings on the Smith Park webpage for a closer look at the chain link screens! This unique detail at the ground is what we were testing with the mock-up. We are also working through how to cut and secure the chain link screen when it is hung at such a steep angle. The mock-up proved that it is possible to achieve the shape we want and we can further test how to assemble the screen in a way that gives it the most durability.
Design updates from Mission Control
The design for the bathroom is becoming even more refined. After meeting with Rural Studio consultants, Susan Rodriguez and Charlie Lowrey, we made subtle changes to the entry sequence and simplified the roof. We are working through details for the roof fabrication The bathroom site is currently being prepped for plumbing and foundation work. As more details are falling into place, we are now able to further explore the graphic identity of the park.
That’s all for this mission! Report back in T–minus a few months for a progress report from the summer.
